Star Tracks

Raquel tries a Broadway stretch
At 41, she is still a masculine ideal of the Woman of the Year—be it One Million Years BC or 1981—so who better than Raquel Welch to fill in for two weeks for vacationing Lauren Bacall in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical? The offer "came out of left field," according to Raquel, who courageously grabbed at the chance. Though her stint does not begin until next month, Welch is already in shape, thanks to daily yoga exercises at her apartment in Paris' Hotel George V. Welch is predictably nervous about the critical reaction to her Broadway debut. She's undergoing a month of grueling song and dance rehearsals but nonetheless frets, "I must have more guts than brains to be following Betty Bacall."

Dustin measures up
Dustin Hoffman plays a female impersonator in his next film, Tootsie, due out in December 1982. The usually reticent Hoffman seemed to be trying on another new personality as well on Manhattan's Central Park West. Hoffman, who sometimes treats paparazzi with disdain, did not shrink from the flashbulbs on his way to dinner with friends. In fact, beneath the beginnings of a Ratso Rizzo beard, the 5'6" actor was all smiles, telling raunchy jokes and pretending to be shorter than his wife, Lisa. She is an attorney whose career is in abeyance while she raises their 8-month-old son, Jacob. As her husband clowned, Lisa got one of those this-is-going-to-be-a-long-evening looks on her pretty face.

The sensuous newsman
One of Walter Cronkite's less burdensome tasks since stepping down as CBS anchorman last March has been to act as honorary chairman for the restoration of a hometown Kansas City burlesque house, the 81-year-old Folly Theater. Celebrating its reopening as a performing arts center, Uncle Walter, 65, took a turn with former Folly head-liner Tempest Storm, 53, and still stripping after all these years. The enthused ecdysiast described her dance partner as "a very sexy and sensuous man." And that's the way it was.

Amos' sweet lesson
Wally "Famous" Amos is so named because of his renowned chocolate chip cookies. But "the most important thing I've ever done," claims Amos, is his work for the Literacy Volunteers of America, an effort to teach millions of the nation's illiterate adults to read. Wally, a high school dropout who eventually got his diploma, has been recruiting tutors all over the country—including 200 at the opening of his bakery at New York's Bloomingdale's. In other words, the cookie king is making like the other Mr. Chips.

Henning's shirt tales
When actor Ned Beatty promised the shirt off his back at a San Francisco benefit for the Transcendental Meditation Program in California Prisons, magician Doug Henning took him at his word. Henning told Beatty and Stephen (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) Collins to unbutton their cuffs, loosen their ties, undo the top three buttons and...shazam! "It's just an old pickpocket stunt," pshawed Henning. Beatty, who's seen quick changes aplenty in two Superman flicks, was spellbound: "I wonder if this guy can fly, too."